A Shot in the Dark
by Mariel1
Summary: One-shot prequel to 'The Hollow'. Alpha makes an ill-fated hunting trip, Tooth Fairy still hates his name, and they have their unofficial first meeting...sort of.


**"A Shot in the Dark"**

 ** _Note:_** _Hey, guys! It's been a while. I'd like to get back to updating 'The Hollow' soon, but life is more hectic than ever and depression has crept in. I'm fine, don't worry; it always seems to happen this time of year. As for why the updates stopped before? Well...I sort of spontaneously burned out and couldn't make the next chapter sound good no matter what I did. I've got 'The Hollow' planned out on index cards, so it_ _ **will**_ _be finished eventually. Meanwhile, I have a short spinoff of sorts. More of a prequel, really. I thought about breaking it into chapters, but I kind of prefer this as a oneshot. Even though the only canon character to appear is the Tooth Fairy, I hope you like it! (My apologies if you read this before I noticed all the mistakes. I had a brain fart and forgot to put it through a spell-checker. Sorry about that!)_

 **At The Pale Horse**

The Pale Horse was mostly quiet this evening, but the bell above the door periodically jingled as customers went in and out. A disconsolate Vampire, likely a new arrival, had commandeered the juke box. 'So Far Away' by Dire Straits seemed to be playing on a loop. As the song wound down for the fifth time, she selected it again and buried her head in her arms.

Alpha, who had come in a few minutes earlier, briefly tried to comfort the girl. "Ah, lass...I know this place can be a bit grim at times, but it isn't so bad."

"You don't know...you don't know..." the girl mumbled, not raising her head.

Robert, a Vampire who seemed to have stepped right out of a Goth look how-to book, shook his long dyed hair out of his eyes (It was purple this week, Alpha saw), awkwardly patted his new charge on the back. "I know this isn't the life you would have chosen, but your old life...It's over now, and you have to accept it."

Alpha glared at him, and the crying Vampire girl lifted her head and hissed at him before being overtaken by stormy sobs and clinging to Alpha.

"What? What did I say?"

"Let her be, Robert..." Alpha pointed at the door, and he shrugged and headed for the door.

"I'm right, you know. Sugarcoating things won't help in the long run."

" _Piss off,_ you!" Alpha half-stood, but Robert was gone. A Witch approached, and Alpha passed the girl off to her. "Here, Pearl, get her home safe, would you? She's missing someone on the surface, and I don't think this is where she needs to be right now."

"Of course, dear. Going out?" The elderly (or elderly-looking) woman asked.

"Have to. Our stores are getting low on meat."

"Be careful," Pearl squeezed Alpha's large shoulder before half-leading, half-dragging the homesick Vampire out the door.

Alpha shook her head, sighing quietly through her nose as she approached the bar. Everyone in The Hollow had either been born there or was there by choice, but that didn't mean that the transition was always easy. Catching the bartender's 'eye', Alpha jerked her chin up in a sort of greeting nod and seated herself on one of the stools. "Evening, Punky."

Punky, who was a sort of living mannequin with a jack-o-lantern for a head, nodded back and asked in a husky voice that resembled a life-long smoker's, "What'll you have?"

"Glenfiddich, neat."

The song on the jukebox ended, mercifully. Someone else selected a different song, and a collective groan broke out as 'The Monster Mash' began to play. So much for 'merciful'!

"Hell's bells, Punky, why is that song even _on_ there?" grumbled Alpha.

"The Founders like it." Punky stowed the bottle underneath the bar, looking unhappy, but not because of the song.

"Of course they do..." was Alpha's bitter reply.

"I really wish you'd reconsider going," sighed Punky as he handed the Werewolf her drink.

She sipped at her scotch to delay having to reply, but the bad thing about not filling in the conversation gap was that the other person would inevitably keep talking, which Punky did.

"I keep telling you, it's _dangerous_."

"Aye, so you do," Alpha set her glass down and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "Come on, Punky. You think these Halloweenies would be able to bring down a full-grown elk without getting themselves gored in the process? We need the meat, you know that. Our reserves are nearing empty, and with as many carnivores as we have down here, _that's_ dangerous."

Someone called for a refill, and Punky began mixing a Beetlejuice Cocktail, which was made with raspberry liqueur, melon liqueur, and cranberry juice. Alpha stuck out her tongue in disgust and nursed her own drink some more. "That stuff smells like piss..."

Punky handed over the drink before turning back to her. "There's always rabbits...We could raise them down here."

"Don't tell _me._ Tell The Founders. Not that they're likely to actually _listen_ to you. Anyway, it's impractical. There isn't much nutritional value in rabbit meat. In fact," she sipped and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, "You can get really sick from too much of it. The meat's really lean. 'Rabbit starvation', I think they call it. Trust me, it's not fun."

She drained her small glass and handed over one of the wooden disks that passed for currency in The Hollow.

Punky took it, then briefly turned away to mix another drink and handed it over to a patron who waited patiently, if somewhat awkwardly, at the edge of their conversation. When the Dark Elf moved off with his mulled cider, Punky turned back to Alpha.

The Werewolf stared pensively at the wall behind Punky, seeming not to actually see it, and he felt a sudden, sharp stab of dread for her. Impulsively, he grasped her clawed hand with his wooden one, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Wh-what're you..." she stammered, something she rarely did.

"Don't go tonight. Send Robert."

Forcing a chuckle, she gently-but-firmly moved her hand out of reach. "I don't think so. Last time I did that he shoplifted three pot roasts, a ten-pound ham, and several packages of cocktail wieners. God only knows where he stowed all that stuff on his way out, and how he got away with it I'll never know."

"You said those little wieners were good," Punky pointed out just as the jukebox went quiet, realizing too late how it sounded. Both he and Alpha face-palmed as the tavern erupted with laughter.

Alpha wrinkled her muzzle in a mock snarl and roared, "You're _children,_ all of you! Perverts..."

No one disagreed with her, and a song and ' _Nobody's Fool_ ' began to play. "Ahhh, Kenny Loggins. I wouldn't have minded living topside for the '80s. The way everyone dressed then, I don't think anyone would've looked twice at me!"

"That's even more true now...Apparently, there's a subgroup of humans who like to dress up as animals." Punky grinned, as if the idea struck him as being deliciously funny.

"Well, to each his own," she shrugged.

Punky returned to filling drink orders while Alpha watched him intently. Finally, she folded her hands on the bar and leaned forward. "You usually don't protest my going up this much, and that's when you protest at all. What's got your gourd in such an uproar, hm?"

He sighed. He seemed to be doing that a lot tonight. "I just have a _really_ bad feeling. No...not just that," he began cleaning a glass. "It's _you._ "

"Me?" she inquired flatly. "Clarify."

"Promise you won't get mad?" he winced a little, which was an interesting thing to see on his carved-but-animate face.

She considered, then hedged, "No, but I promise to hear you out."

Well, that was something, anyway. He plunged ahead. "You haven't been yourself since August. I don't know what it is about that month in particular, but it's every year. And every year you get a little...self-destructive. You know, taking unnecessary risks. And you laugh it off like it's nothing."

He paused to see how she was taking this so far, but she only indicated that he should continue.

"Well...it's never lasted this long, and I...I just...I worry." He finished lamely.

Rather than getting angry, Alpha favored him with a soft smile...or as soft a smile as a Werewolf's lupine features would allow. "I appreciate that. Really. But I'm _fine_. August is just a difficult time for me. I...I lost some people who were...very dear to me. It was a long time ago. Some years it hits me harder than others, but I _swear,_ I'm fine. M'not trying to die. We just need meat. Okay?"

Punky wasn't sure he liked how glib she was being, but he accepted her answer nonetheless. "All right. But you be _careful_ up there, you hear? I don't want to have to stand by your grave."

"Heh..."

Her wry chuckle displeased him, and he insisted, " _Promise_ me."

"I promise. Look, I have to go. Take care, Punky." She got up to leave, but he called after her, having remembered something she said before.

"Why _elk?_ "

She scoffed, as if the answer should have been obvious. "Because they're easier to bring down than _moose._ Later."

And then she was gone, not even waiting to see how he would react to what was probably a joke on her part. Though, with her occasionally dry sense of humor, it was sometimes hard to tell with her.

Not for the first time, Punky wondered where his soul had come from. The Witch, Pearl, had used magic to coax a wandering soul that couldn't pass on into the form he now...not inhabited, but _was_. Aside from Pearl, Alpha was the only person in The Hollow that he had a close emotional attachment to, and with Alpha it had been _immediate._ It wasn't romantic in the slightest, but it was there, and it was powerful. He could remember nothing from before his animation, but his soul evidently recognized her from some distant past, some previous life, maybe, and this unnerved him. Now, more than ever, he feared for her.

A moment later someone hailed him, wanting a refill on their Cobweb Cocktail, and his night went on as it usually did.

 **Poor Judgment**

An hour had passed since Alpha left the Fairy Ring, which had decided to deposit her in a dense bramble patch, and she was still picking burrs out of her fur as she padded along under the cover of semi-darkness. The moon was full, and she could easily see where she was going.

The whitetail deer population was supposedly out of control here, possibly due to hunting restrictions. Alpha didn't know, and nor did she care. As far as she was concerned, human laws could kiss her furry backside. Still, as she navigated the forest of what appeared to be a nature reserve of some kind, she wondered if the deer hadn't gotten the memo that they were supposed to be obnoxiously numerous there.

She smirked to herself as she imagined Bambi and Faline prancing happily through suburbia, and some old man complaining to his wife, ' _Damn it, Helen! Those friggin' deer are eating my chrysanthemums again!_ ' All right, enough of that, time to focus...

She paused when she noticed a trail camera secured to one of the trees.

It was hardly unusual for Alpha to spot a trail camera on one of her hunting trips, and for the most part she avoided them, as she did now. It also wasn't uncommon to catch a faint whiff of human scent, for humans tended to show up where they weren't meant to be.

Alpha's first clue that something wasn't right was the intensity of the scent, and she crouched down to lower her visibility as she sniffed the air. Canine nostrils twitched, but the wind then shifted so that it was blowing from behind her, and she rotated her ears this way and that to listen for sounds that shouldn't be there, but again she was stymied. Blasted wind...

There was a lull in the wind then, and the scent returned, stronger this time. A human _had_ been in the area, and recently. His tracks were everywhere, and she could still smell him.

' _Get out of there,_ ' her instincts screamed at her, but they needed the meat. Needed it desperately. And she was one of the few residents of The Hollow who could quickly bring down large prey animals and haul them back for processing.

She should go. But, surely, the odds of him still being there were slim. For one thing, it wasn't hunting season. Or was it? She wasn't sure now. For another, there were 'No Trespassing' signs on several of the surrounding trees. No, Alpha was quite confident that she was the only poacher in the area.

At least, that was what she thought before the gunshot.

There was a sensation of being punched in the shoulder, but for the moment there was no pain. Unable to run on all fours in her current state, Alpha still made good time running on two as she fled back the way she came. More shots cracked through the night, and she heard one of the bullets whiz past her ear, but she quickly outdistanced her pursuer...if he was even pursuing her at all.

She felt pain _now_ , oh yes! Her shoulder burned, and sticky warm liquid ran down her chest and back. She assumed the bullet had passed all the way through, and she surmised that it had been buckshot, not pellets. If it was the latter, she felt quite sure that her arm would now be hanging by a thread. She wouldn't know how bad it was until she made it back home, and she _would_ make it back. She had promised.

Alpha slowed to a walk as a wave of dizziness came over her, and she stumbled a little before she hunkered down near a tree to catch her breath. She felt her injured shoulder, felt the hole in it that seemed to mock her...felt the bone _inside_ the hole, though this was quite by accident. She couldn't tell if she had any fractures or not, but the head of her humerus no longer seemed to be locked into her shoulder socket. No wonder she couldn't move her arm! She growled as she snatched her good hand back from the wound, then forced herself to put pressure on it to lessen the bleeding. "Hellfire and damnation...This was my favorite shirt..."

Nearly there...She was almost back at the bramble patch. She forced herself to her feet with a grunt, then felt a wave of cold wash over her that was only partly due to blood loss.

"Hey..."

The voice came from the tree right above her. It was a rare thing for Alpha to be badly frightened, but injured as she was and caught by surprise, she did the first thing that came to mind. In fact, it was what she should have done the moment she caught such a strong human scent; she _bolted._

"Wait, you're hurt! Let me-"

But she disappeared into the briars and was gone.

 **The Would-Be Good Samaritan**

Occasionally, the Tooth Fairy would have a night that was slower than usual. He, like Santa, made use of Father Time's time-space continuum shenanigans to make his stops. Unlike Santa, he did this every night of the year without fail.

He liked it, really. It made the kids happy to find a coin in place of the tooth they had lost, though sometimes the parents got to them first. It wasn't unusual for him to find a five dollar bill under the pillow (sometimes inside a special 'tooth fairy pillow'), and then he would simply move on to the next stop he had to make.

In a way, that made him feel rather inadequate. He always left a quarter, and children used to be satisfied with that. He supposed he could leave more, but like so many of the other Legendary Figures, he was slow to change. But either way, as long as the kids were happy, that was all that mattered.

His latest stop had gotten him thinking, though. The tooth was right where it should be, and he made the exchange, but the special pillow? It was in the shape of a _lady_. A lady in a pink dress, with delicate butterfly wings...

He unconsciously sank in the sky as his own wings slowed their delicate patter. His _butterfly_ wings. He sighed and announced to no one in particular, "I need to take a break..."

Tooth Fairy descended over a stretch of government forest and settled himself comfortably in the sprawling branches of an enormous poplar tree. He tugged fitfully at his right wing, then desisted when he accidentally hurt himself. Staring down at his hands, he began winding and unwinding the dental floss he always wore around one index finger or the other. What was so wrong with the name 'Roy' anyway? No one would ever think he was some girl in a tutu if his name was 'Roy'!

Ah, well...At least Santa got it. Santa was the only one who called Tooth Fairy 'The Molinator', which was actually kind of cool.

He nearly fell out of the tree at the distant crack of gunfire. First one shot, then a few more. From what he knew, hunters weren't allowed on this property. He fluttered his wings enough to lift himself up to stand on the branch, and weighed his options. He had coins. He supposed he could find a payphone, and...oh, right. Good luck with that!

Maybe he really _was_ becoming obsolete...

Eh, he should probably just let it be. He would have to get going soon anyway. He was about to fly off once more when he heard the distant noise of a large animal crashing through the forest. Whatever it was, it wasn't even trying to be quiet. The shots must have scared the deer this way.

But wait...

Waaaiiiit...

 _What in the name of Titania was_ _ **that?**_

A _Werewolf_ stumbled into view, stopping to rest beneath his tree, and Tooth Fairy covered his mouth in absolute shock. He'd thought they were long gone, hunted to extinction decades ago! Evidently not. This one-a female, going by the height and the presence of breasts, which were difficult to discern in this form but not impossible-seemed to have been hunting where she shouldn't have been, much like the human who had shot her.

He knew he shouldn't care that she was injured. Her kind wouldn't have been so reviled if they hadn't earned their reputation as ruthless killers, would they? Still, as he looked off in the direction from which she had come, he could just barely make out a figure in the distance. For the job he did he needed good vision, and he could see quite well in the dark. The human was unharmed, and seemed to be actively hunting her now. Since she hadn't stayed to fight, she must have either been caught by surprise and thought discretion the better part of valor, or...

Perhaps she simply didn't _want_ to fight a human. ' _Or likely,'_ he thought, _'both.'_ Tooth Fairy bit his thin lower lip. What did he really _know_ about Werewolves, anyway? He had never actually _seen_ one before, and legends weren't always right. Legends evolved and changed over time, while the figures they represented usually did not. Not in an outward sense, anyway. If the current legend was to be believed, he himself should be a winged girl in a pink tutu!

He nearly cried out in fright when the creature beneath him growled in pained frustration and actually _spoke._

"Hellfire and damnation...This was my favorite shirt..."

The growl-a rough, animal noise-fitted her form, but when she spoke she simply sounded like a woman. Her voice was in the slightly deeper range for her gender, but still, unmistakably, feminine.

A woman. She was hurt. The hunter-turned-hunted. And _her_ hunter had found her trail and was making a beeline for where she was. There was time, but not much. Despite the name that went with his job, Tooth Fairy was a _guy_ through and through, and a nice one at that. He had to do something! Warn her, somehow. He called to her, his voice pitched low in a semi-whisper. "Hey..."

Immediately, the Werewolf took fright and ran off.

Oh no...

"Wait, you're hurt! Let me-"

The Werewolf disappeared into a briar patch, and Tooth Fairy sensed something that no human could every hope to perceive. There was a surge of Fairy magic, and the night became eerily silent. Fluttering his wings, Tooth Fairy carried himself above the briars just in time to see the ring of thirteen mushrooms, barely visible through the tangle of thorns, retreat into the soft earth.

"That...that's impossible..."

The cold feeling in the pit of his stomach lurched and became something else when he heard the human approaching, and he quickly got out of there. Fortunately, he wasn't spotted.

"But how..." he whispered. Werewolves apparently still _did_ exist, and it seemed that she was somehow in league with one of his people. Wouldn't he have heard about it?

His sister's face briefly surfaced in his mind, and he quickly slapped himself to banish her. That ghost had been buried _long_ ago, and he simply couldn't deal with this right now. His sister was _gone,_ and a Werewolf was hardly a damsel in distress. He had work to do.

 **Home Again**

"Ow!" Alpha tensed as Pearl prodded at the wound, which had already begun to heal. At least, the soft tissues had begun to knit a little. Her dislocated shoulder was another story.

"You've gotten careless of late," chided Pearl, handing Alpha something small. "Put that under your tongue."

"What is it?" Alpha took it, but suspiciously eyed it instead of doing as she was told.

"You wouldn't know if I told you, now do as I say!" Pearl turned away and began laying some things out on her kitchen table.

The Witch's grandmotherly impatience cowed Alpha somewhat, and she tucked the bitter bundle under her tongue and pretended it was an Earl Grey Teabag. "Ugh...What's it supposed to do?"

"It's for the pain. You'll also feel a little tipsy, for lack of a better term. Let me know when you feel that, and I'll pop your shoulder back into place and sew you up," Pearl replied, smiling as a black cat jumped up onto the table with a chirrup of greeting. "Omen, my precious! Mama's busy, sweetheart."

"So I see," snickered the cat, cheekily twitching his tail as he gazed up at the sour-faced Werewolf. "It's a pity _you_ don't have nine lives, Snoopy."

"Pearl, your familiar's teasing me..."

"Oh, hush..." The Witch chuckled as she set out a bag of cotton balls and a large bottle of iodine, then washed her hands at the sink. "You're lucky you're alive to hear it."

"I know..." Alpha rested her chin on her hand, feeling a pleasant sort of buzz beginning to kick in. Her shoulder throbbed less than before, and she swallowed a mouthful of bitter saliva. "You know...as nasty as this stuff tastes, I think I like it."

"Don't get any ideas," Pearl said drily.

"I was joking. I think it's kicking in, though."

"Oh, good, good," Pearl grinned, cracking her knuckles. "Time to set that shoulder! You know the drill. Give me your hand."

All was quiet for a long moment. Then there was a pop, and the small cottage erupted with a string of such blistering profanity that Omen hid under the couch.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Ugh...I hate everything..."


End file.
